THE ODES AND CARMEN SAECULARE OF HORACE

PREFACE.

I scarcely know what excuse I can offer for making
public this attempt to “translate the untranslatable.”
No one can be more convinced than I am that a really
successful translator must be himself an original
poet; and where the author translated happens to be
one whose special characteristic is incommunicable
grace of expression, the demand on the translator’s
powers would seem to be indefinitely increased.
Yet the time appears to be gone by when men of great
original gifts could find satisfaction in reproducing
the thoughts and words of others; and the work, if
done at all, must now be done by writers of inferior
pretension. Among these, however, there are still
degrees; and the experience which I have gained since
I first adventured as a poetical translator has made
me doubt whether I may not be ill-advised in resuming
the experiment under any circumstances. Still,
an experiment of this kind may have an advantage of
its own, even when it is unsuccessful; it may serve
as a piece of embodied criticism, showing what the
experimenter conceived to be the conditions of success,
and may thus, to borrow Horace’s own metaphor
of the whetstone, impart to others a quality which
it is itself without. Perhaps I may be allowed,
for a few moments, to combine precept with example,
and imitate my distinguished friend and colleague,
Professor Arnold, in offering some counsels to the
future translator of Horace’s Odes, referring,
at the same time, by way of illustration, to my own
attempt.